September 24, 2008
Got up early (what happened to my easy schedule where I could live the argentine life of staying up late and sleeping in late?). Ate breakfast and walked over to flacso to meet the remises to go to casa del nino. Unfortunately, they came 2 hours late, and we ended up not going since we would have had about 30 minutes actually there (due to the transportation time) before we would have had to come home. A free Wednesday was something I hadn’t experienced in a while. I puttered around checking my email and such, then a friend from Georgetown and I went to this bookstore that is in an old theatre and did some homework. After that we ate at this natural restaurant, which had a lot of English speakers. But I had a spinach salad which was delicious! We tried to go to a museum and a library both of which were closed, so instead we walked to our Spanish class. After Spanish I met another friend and we went to coffee (again café con leche y media lunas I am getting to be quite the expert). And then meandered through the city. I came home and packed and answered some emails and did some errands for my trip to JUJUY (pronounced who-who-ee). I am very excited to venture to northern Argentina to see the more “traditional argentine life.” The only bad thing about the trip so far is that my memory card on my camera broke! Ahhh! Right before a trip where I want to take tons of pictures of the salt flats and all the neat stuff I am going to see. Luckily, stefy loaned me her memory card. But what timing. Boo! Also she helped me write an email to the kids that I talked to yesterday (I passed around my notebook and I got like 15 email addresses) argentine friends here I come.  off to eat dinner. Hasta lunes!
September 23
Busy busy day. I started out the day very early (I feel like all my entries start like this). I took the colectivo to a high school. I got there way too early so I did a bit of walking around. I ended up waiting at what I thought was the school I was supposed to be at (turned out I found out about 10 min before I was supposed to be there the actual school was across the street and down the block.) I met another flacsita, and we got ready to do the actividad de intercambio with the seniors. I was a bit nervous since I didn’t really know what it entailed, but I got even more nervous when we were sat down on separate benches and the seniors sat on the ground, and grilled us. It was really fun, I got to practice my Spanish, and my public speaking. Although I will say I am glad I didn’t know what the format would be so I didn’t have time to worry about it. They asked some hard questions (hard to answer in english) some of the themes were September 11th, the war, bush, cheerleaders, university, the typical schedule, and many more. It was nice because I had a person (roche a flacso staff member who is basically my age which is funny since he is one of the people running things) to help me when I didn’t understand and such. The great part was that I am doing my final paper on los FLOGGERS, a youth urban tribe of Buenos aires, and I got so much information about los floggers from people who know them the best. I even got an interview with a flogger—but the best part about that was that I hardly had to work since the kids asked many of the questions! After the intercambio I took the bus back home and quick brought my laundry to the laundry mat, and got lunch (empanadas) then headed to class. After Spanish class I went to my service class, and I ventured to a book store and bought a book on youth cibercultures (edited by the teacher of my class at the UBA) after that I headed home to pick up my laundry. I had an urge (that never goes away) for a typical argentine snack at any time of the day, a café con leche and 3 media lunas. I walked around to try and find semi cheap ones and a nice café. I like to find the more “argentine” cafes (or bares here) rather than the chains or ones with lots of English speakers—I like those whole in the wall, chip in your cup, cheaper ones, they have a bit more character. I read a bit of my book over my snack and then came home to work on my final paper for my service class. It is not going to well, mostly because my theme is a bit odd. I am commenting on how casa del Niño fulfills maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Late dinner as usual then to bed early since I had a busy long day and was in for another today.